Your Next Month Could Be FREE:PowerOptions would like to give you a month's service for free. Simply tell a friend about the great tools you make money with here and when they subscribe we thank you with a month's free service. Tell a friend.

As your agreement for the receipt and use of market data provides, the securities markets (1) reserve all rights to the market data that they make available; (2) do not guarantee that data; and (3) shall not be liable for any loss due either to their negligence or to any cause beyond their reasonable control.

Site Events and Notices...

November 25, 2014

The portfolio tools have been upgraded with easier trade entry and edit capabilities. Any dates that you have to choose are now calendar "date pickers" rather than typing in a date. Any multi-leg positions you enter will perpetuate the appropriate number of contracts to the other legs based on your first entered leg.

November 18, 2014

The main Portfolio tool has been updated with a tab navigation system, larger fonts, more white space for easier reading and a new view that shows important event dates like recent/upcoming earnings announcements and ex-dividend date.

November 7, 2014

We've had Earnings Dates for years, but today we added "after market" or "before market" next to the dates on the Stock Detail tool. This helps provide one more level of detail for the Earnings traders.

November 3, 2014

Our Portfolio tools have been updated with a new view to allow seeing the Greeks like Delta, Theta, etc. for your options positions. Let us know if you have any further ideas to improve these new views.

October 22, 2014

We have updated our Free Live/Archive Webinars page with a new design to make finding webinars of interest easier. Please let us know if you have other ideas for improvement.

October 20, 2014

To make options expiration easier, we have added an "Expire All Options" choice to the "Position Actions" menu item, of the "Edit More Info" buttons, of the Portfolio tools, for any option transaction line, to expire all options in the position at once. This is especially handy for condor and butterfly positions, but applies to any positions you might have.

October 8, 2014

Limit Search Results to 1 Per Security

As the market becomes more volatile you may see several results in your Search from the same security. Different strike prices on the same security still match your criteria, but in a real portfolio you will likely only trade one position on a security at a time. You can now limit your Search results to 1 option trade per security. Simply look for the check-box in the 'Price/Strike Price' section of the Options tab in the Parameter Field.

July 23, 2014

Portfolio Alerts Emailed to You!

PowerOptions subscribers can now select to have their Portfolio Alerts emailed to you when an alert is triggered. This new feature scans all Alerts across all your Portfolios on a regular basis for timely notifications. To Opt-In to this new feature simply click the 'Email Alerts' box in the Profit and Loss Portfolio tool, and make sure to check out the two new Help Videos on setting Alerts and the new Email Alert feature!

June 2, 2014

You asked for faster tools and data - we have made it happen! We have upgraded our servers! All page load times should be 25% to 75% faster than before. All PowerOptions tools plus the Historical Data and Backteting tools should have noticeably faster response times.

May 20, 2014

A short video was added to the search page for each strategy to instruct how to change and customize search parameter settings.

April 16, 2014

The Bid-Ask Spread filter has been added to the Search tool for all strategies. You can now filter for the monetary Bid-Ask Spread for each option in multi-leg strategies.

But sometimes, that is not enough. A $1.00 Bid-Ask Spread might not seem that high when looking at higher priced options. To satisfy this need, we have also added the % Bid-Ask Spread for each option in every strategy as well. The % Bid Ask Spread compares the monetary Bid-Ask spread against the option premium.

These criteria are also available as column selections in the Search By Symbol tools.

March 19, 2014

The Collar and Short Collar pages have been updated with two new criteria:

Time Value Ratio: Compares the long (bought) option time value vs. the short (sold) option time value.

These ratios will help Collar and Short Collar investors better compare the premiums and IV's of the two options for analysis.

November 26, 2013

The portfolio alert system has been updated to color code each alert by sentiment:

Alert Configuration Page:Each alert allows you to now select a red, yellow, or green background for the alert. The color selections only appear when you activate a given alert. The top section of the alert detail page was redesigned to show a smaller stock chart (unhidden) by default now, and a small explanation of the new background colors to the right of the chart. The chart is a hyperlink now, and will open a pop-up window to BigCharts with a more detailed chart.

Portfolio Trade Entry Page:The automatic alerts that we set for you on options and iron condors have been updated to automatically set the alert sentiment color as well. The 80% decrease in short option price alert will be green and the iron condor alerts will be red. You can change these alerts and colors anytime you wish.

Portfolio P/L Page:The alert column in the My Portfolio tool now shows the color of the worst alert for each position. So, it will only show green if there aren't any yellow or red alerts also triggered at that time for the position. Same for yellow - yellow only shows if there are no red alerts triggered for the position. The Lower Limit/Upper Limit columns that were normally colored red now show the color specified for that alert.

Portfolio Summary Page:The alerts on the portfolio summary page are now color coded by alert sentiment specified for that alert.

November 18, 2013

The spread SmartSearchXL tool for vertical spreads and calendar spreads now allows sorting the results by the % out-of-the-money (OTM).

The Custom Spread Tool now allows adding additional trade lines to the entry area. The tool will default to 4 trade lines, but under the last trade line is a button that says "+ Add Trade Line". When this button is clicked another trade line will appear at the bottom of the existing trade lines, and directly above the button. The previous version of the tool was limited to 6 trades total and always showed all lines even if they were not used.

October 7, 2013

A new indicator has been added to the Market Sentiment tools. It measures the gap between the MACD and the signal line of the SPX. Both are shown in the stock research page. The wider the gap the greater the indication that the stock may be over bought or over sold.

August 29, 2013

The "Market Sentiment" tool has been enhanced with a historical view. Changes in the sentiment indicator can be viewed one month back in time. A 20 minute video has also been added to explain the Market Sentiment tool.

August 12, 2013

We have added to the Signature Tools tab a new feature called Market Sentiment. It consists of 12 indicators to help determine if the market is bullish, neutral, or bearish. The indicators provide an overall summary, but each indicator can be viewed under details to see its distribution over the last 5 years or its performance vs. the SPX.

May 30, 2013

The site has been updated with a Volatility Skew tool. This tool allows you to quickly and easily see the implied volatility's of all options in the same expiration cycle for any underlying. By comparing the implied volatility this way, an investor can see 'strike skew' where implied volatility might be high or low as well as outlying spikes or troughs.

If call volatility's are higher than put volatility's, this indicates that traders are buying calls. If put volatility's are higher than call volatility's, this indicates that traders are buying puts.

Due to put-call parity and investors tending toward buying OTM puts for protection and selling OTM calls for income, we expect, in most cases, to see higher implied volatility for strike prices below the current price of the underlying and lower implied volatility for strike prices above the current price of the underlying.

May 16, 2013

A new filter for MACD has been added to the PowerOptions Search tool for all strategies! This new filter (located in the Technicals tab) will allow you to search for stocks where the MACD is above or below the Signal Line and by how many days. You will also be able to screen for stocks where the MACD and Signal Line are above or below the Zero line. This filter will allow you to better screen for stocks with positive or negative momentum.

April 26, 2013

The new streamlined Search tool is live! The Search tool upgrade will allow you to more quickly find, view and change criteria in the parameter field for any strategy. You will also be able to view your active filters that are being used in a given search and quickly link to those filters to make adjustments.

April 3, 2013

Ideally we want to enter a bullish position just as the stock is about to move up. It's not possible to know in advance when the move will occur, but we can get an early indicator once the move has started. Using the PowerOptions screener an investor can scan the entire market very quickly to find a first-time stock price crossing of a moving average - such a crossing occurrence could signal a buying opportunity.

We have added a filter that allows investors to filter stocks by the number of days the stock price is over or under the SMA 20, SMA 50 and the number of days the SMA 20 is over or under the SMA 50. These filters are available in all strategy searches, historical searches and viewable columns in the results.

March 20, 2013

Added a measure of the number of up or down days for each issue. This is a short term measure of strength or weakness in each issue. This feature is available as a screening parameter, column choice to display, and for historical searches.

March 15, 2013

The position analysis page as part of "My Portfolio" has been updated with a "What if Calculations" link. This link will allow trial calculations on a position based on a price and date projection to evaluate the price performance of the position.

February 4, 2013

In response to 'Continuous Weekly Options', we've made adjustments to the expiration selection menus in the Search and Option Chain tools. We have modified the Search tools to allow screening for 'All Weeklies', which includes all weekly options from 1 to 6 weeks out. The standard expiration cycles are separated so you can quickly screen for just the standard expiration cycles (including quarterlies).

In the Option Chain you can select the view of a specific weekly series or all expiration cycles.

January 31, 2013

As a result of the 'Continuous Weeklies', the option descriptions have been updated across the site to include expiration day of the month. So each option description will clearly describe the contract, i.e. $SPX 2013 02-FEB 1,500 CALL

December 14, 2012

Last November we made available spread calculations based on the mid-point between the bid and ask prices. Those calculations have now been carried over to the Position Analysis pages to show the Liquidation Prices of credit spread positions based on the use of mid-point prices. The use of mid-point values can generally increase returns considerably.

September 7, 2012

Backend Power Financial Group Inc. system upgrade. All four of our web sites now have a unified logon with email address and consitent password. New online store sites for easy and consitent product purchases and subscription signup. More security added for sensitive information.

March 21, 2012

Upgraded the Position Analysis for Long Puts in the Profit/Loss Portfolio:* Convert Long Put to Calendar Put* Roll Put to Lower Strike to lock in profits* Liquidate Half or All of Profitable Put position

November 28, 2011

We have made some major enhancements to the spreads capability on the PowerOptions site. We call the new feature a "Mid-Point Spread Chain". All of the spreads created are based on using the mid-point between the bid and the asked prices. We have found that using the mid-point for limit orders will generally bring in larger credits and increase our returns. Just to summarize the features:

* Mid-points used for the return calculations* The chain can be screened for:

In addition, this tool allows you to view the Parity trades of the vertical spreads using the mid-point calculations.

A Profit and Loss Chart and further details can be accessed by clicking the [+] icon next to any spread.

This tool can be accessed by:* Type in a stock symbol at the top of the page and click 'Spread Chain'* Link to the Spread Chain from the More Info. buttons on the Search and Search by Symbol tool on vertical spreads and Iron Condor strategies.

There is a brief help video available as well. When you open the Spread Chain tool, simply click the '?' icon next to the tool title.